Tag Archives: Media

Televassi is a bit of a newcomer to the fandom, however in his time here he’s been amazed by the friendly and creative nature of the people that make it up. Apart from being a writer, he also enjoys rock climbing and scuba diving, and has a keen interest in Celtic and Germanic cultures. You can find this torc wearing wolf on twitter as @Televassi, and find more of his writing and art on FA and Weasyl. He’s always happy to meet new people, so don’t be afraid to say hi!

For a long time I’ve never bothered to explain what I write about to friends and family. I’ve never bothered to explain why I have art of anthropomorphic wolf people. Nor have I bothered to explain precisely who I’m talking to online, or meeting on weekends. “Friends” is usually the monosyllabic and vague answer I’ll give – often met with little investigation now that making friendships online is a little less uncommon.

While such evasions may deflect questions, it isn’t satisfying to lie.

The idea that furry is a slice of ordinary society is one well worth keeping in mind. I wrote about it as my very first article on this site, even. It’s important to consider the ways in which we, as furries, are not somehow separate from the rest of the world; furry does not take place in a vacuum, as I believe I’ve said before. We are all members of our own social structures both within and without this subculture, and it’s that mixture of individualities and social ideals that belong to its members that help to make us who we are as a fandom

The very phrase ‘social structures’, however, is telling, in that that is precisely what some of us seek to escape by means of our membership to this social group: structure. For many, furry is seen as something apart from the social structures that surround them in their day-to-day lives. That has come up several times before here, of course. I wrote about leadership in a decentralized subculture, and JM and I have both written about the intersection of furry and the wider cultures to which we belong, both in terms of conformity and non-conformity. This puts us in something of an interesting – and ever-changing – space, as furries. We exist somewhat apart from the wider cultural contexts of which we are a part, though at the same time we cannot escape the connections entirely, for they inform a large portion of the way our own social group works.

This tension between conformity and non-conformity, belonging and not belonging, being a part of society or rejecting it, is a type of liminality, exiting between states, on the threshold, and certainly worth taking a moment to explore.

This is an edited reprint of an article that first appeared in Anthro #11.

It sometimes feels like I’ve tried to spend most of the last ten years of my life trying to explain the fast-growing Anthropomorphic Animal, or ‘Furry’, phenomenon to outsiders. Yet the trend absolutely begs explanation. Attendance at furry-themed events is doubling roughly every three years, fur-fans (or, simply, ‘furs’) are becoming a highly-visible presence in many online communities, and more and more anthro-themed marketing campaigns appear every day.

So what’s behind the sudden explosion? There have always been anthro-themed ad campaigns, as any consumer of breakfast cereals can testify. Practically all of us grew up with Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, and Sugar Bear. Nor are anthro characters anything new in entertainment, as attested to by Tom Cat, Jerry Mouse, Pepe le Pew, and Speedy Gonzales. Children have been sleeping with stuffed animals at least since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, and as early as 1922 they were common enough to serve as a powerful literary symbol in the classic story The Velveteen Rabbit. Even long before modern times, humanized animal characters occupied an honored place in the human heart; where would Aesop have been without them?

I’m sure I’ve gone on before about the benefits of working within a community, but I’ll say it again: you guys are ace.

While running the [a][s] Twitter account, I do my best to follow back everyone who follows the account. This isn’t simply a nice-guy type thing to do; some of the best inspiration comes from all you fuzzies out there. After all, the articles here would get pretty boring if they were solely about what it was like to be a furry without being a member of the furry subculture. This week’s article comes from a recommendation and brief conversation with Drenthe, a raccoon of quality, about a book he had seen a review of which I subsequently purchased. The book was Hanne Blank’s Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. I think it’s fairly obvious by now how much gender and sexuality interest me.

One of the early chapters of the book brings up an interesting concept that I only recently thought to apply to the fandom, and that’s the concept of doxa.

Hi folks, Makyo here. As mentioned, I’m taking a week off to get caught up on some stuff. This week’s article comes courtesy of Calamari. Enjoy!

As a reader of this article, you may or may not have seen a recent mini-documentary on the furry fandom, filmed by National Geographic. Although I’m not a subscriber to this fine organisation, I’ve read many of their articles. Time and time again they produce splendid pieces on interesting aspects of history, the environment, and culture. So my first thought upon hearing that they’d chosen furries to be the subject of one of their small documentaries, was confusion. Why had they let their standards slip this time?

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[adjective][species] is a blog that takes a look at the furry fandom from the inside. The writings here come from a wide variety of furry authors, and cover any and all meta-furry topics that we can get our paws on.